


Hyungwon's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by betamaz (orphan_account)



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:37:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/betamaz
Summary: Hyungwon had a few rules for survival, now that the world had gone to hell.1) Go for the head. Those zombie movies had gotten it right, somehow.2) Making a lot of noise is, generally, a bad idea.3) Learn how to fight, as quickly as possible.4) Don't trust others, and definitely don't make friends.Because one thing that Hyungwon had learned the hard way is that the zombie apocalypse has a tendency of bringing out the worst in people, but against all odds he keeps running into those six, again and again. For whatever reason the universe seemed determined that they were going to change his mind.





	Hyungwon's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> An idea I had that kept gnawing on me (lol get it), so here have a mx zombie apocalypse AU
> 
> First chapter focuses mostly on Hyungwon and Wonho. Don't worry, more characters (and ships) to come, and I'll be adding more tags and whatnot as I go (and also as I figure out how AO3 tagging works lmao).
> 
> Enjoy!

Surviving the zombie apocalypse wasn’t easy, but Hyungwon managed.

He’d figured out that the movies had gotten it right, somehow, and that targeting the brain was the only way to properly kill the undead. The zombies also tended to move towards noise, so it was best to keep quiet and to stay out of sight unless you wanted to get mobbed. He’d been forced to pick up weapons, too - something that his pre-apocalypse self would never have dreamed of doing. It didn't take long to learn that he was awful at aiming and shooting guns, but he picked up knives (and throwing them) quickly enough (although there was still a piece of him that was jealous of the woman he once saw wielding a sword, but that was neither here nor there).

Hyungwon learned some of the more unsavory things, too. That it was better to not think about who the zombie whose face you were putting a knife through used to be. To walk past the corpses of children, the empty strollers, as quickly as possible and without dwelling on it.

And finally, a lesson that took far, far too long to drive home.

Never join groups, and never make friends. It always fell apart, in one way or another.

* * *

  
(The universe seemed hellbent on changing his mind on the last lesson, but he wouldn’t catch on until much later.)

* * *

  
It wasn’t long after noon when he arrived on the outskirts of the city, with the sun high in the sky and baking the pavement beneath his feet. He could feel the heat through the worn, thin soles of his shoes - he’d taken them off the shelves of a store he’d looted for food, but these shoes were unfortunately nearing the end of their lifespan.

The fact that he’d been walking for upwards of a week hadn’t helped, but a city promised better pickings, more supplies, and, if he was lucky, a secluded building for him to take shelter in for a little while. He’d been picking up odd cans of food from abandoned shops and gas stations along the road, but even that was beginning to not be enough. At the very least, though, he just wanted a place to rest and let his poor, blistered feet recover from the days of walking.

On the other hand, more supplies and bigger cities usually also meant more survivors and more zombies, but at this point it was a risk he was willing to take. At the very least, he needed some new goddamn shoes before he hit the road again.

* * *

  
Which was how, just before dusk, he found himself rummaging through an abandoned department store on the outskirts of the city center.

It was also how, the first time he met Wonho, he almost stabbed him in the face.

In his defense, it was, you know, the apocalypse. Meaning there were, you know, _zombies_ to be on the constant lookout for. And the guy _did_ show up behind him without warning, and it was just at that time of day when dusk was on the verge of full darkness, and for all Hyungwon knew it could have been a zombie that had just tripped over the bucket behind him.

So of course, Hyungwon’s first reaction was to whip around from the stash of canned soup he had been in the process of taking off the shelves and to lunge towards the figure’s head with his trusty knife.

The other man’s only saving grace was his own reflexes, seizing Hyungwon’s wrist a mere few inches from his face. For a beat, the two froze, staring blankly at each other. Hyungwon took a moment to process the other (surprisingly attractive, unfairly ripped) man with a firm grasp on his wrist and the empty bucket on its side next to his foot and finally -

“You’re not dead,” Hyungwon croaked. The rasp of his voice and the dryness of this throat startled him, but he supposed it was only to be expected. He couldn’t even properly remember the last time he had spoken aloud with someone else.

The other man, startled, let out a burst of laughter. “No, I suppose I’m not,” he said, a wide smile breaking out across his face.

How did he have such a nice smile? Hyungwon was used to seeing scowls, frowns, and faces lined with stress. A smile was something he hadn’t seen for ages, and Hyungwon could help but be dazzled for a moment.

The other man let Hyungwon’s wrist go and stepped back, taking a moment to pick up the bucket he had accidentally knocked over and put it back where it was. Hyungwon remained frozen, watching him with wary eyes until he stood up, still smiling, and offered Hyungwon his hand. “I’m Wonho, by the way.”

Hyungwon narrowed his eyes, still in a fighting stance. “I could still stab you, you know,” he said warningly. “For all I know you could be here to brutally murder me and raid all these supplies for yourself.”

(It was all bravado, of course. Hyungwon had eyes, he could see that the other man - Wonho, apparently - could probably break him in half like a twig. Hyungwon was a twig, and he wasn’t all that happy about it, but he wasn’t an idiot.)

“But I’m not,” Wonho said, “I mean, yeah, I’m here to get some supplies, but I’m not gonna kill you for them. You were here first.” Suddenly, he brightened, and turned to start rummaging in the bag, mumbling to himself for a moment.

Hyungwon still hadn’t moved from his position with the knife up in the air where Wonho’s face had almost been a few moments ago, frozen like some sort of comical statue as he watched the other man’s movements with wary eyes. After a few moments of shuffling things around in the bag, Hyungwon heard the clinks of a few bottles as Wonho finally straightened up and turned around, a pair of bottles in his hands.

“Here, take this!” Wonho said, offering the bottles to him, his smile a bit more shy now. Hyungwon stared at him uncomprehendingly.

It was alcohol. Soju, to be specific. Hyungwon hadn’t had any in months - alcohol was like gold in the apocalypse. People liked to say it was because of its uses as a painkiller or disinfectant or whatever other excuse. But honestly, having something to take an edge off the stress, the fear, the pain of losing everything safe and familiar in the wake of the world ending was invaluable these days. The fact that Wonho was offering him some just mere moments after meeting him was...well, Hyungwon wasn’t sure what to think.

“Why are you offering me this? Don’t you know how valuable it is?” Hyungwon said incredulously. He did, however, finally move from his frozen position to turn to face Wonho fully, although his nerves were still jittery, alert.

“It’s a peace offering,” Wonho said, “I don’t really drink, but a lot of people seem to like it these days, and you seem like you could use a little loosening up, to be honest. Don’t worry, it’s sealed so it’s not poisoned or anything.”

Hyungwon stared for a moment, and finally let his guard drop. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, hesitantly gesturing to the bottles in Wonho’s hands. “You don’t know me, I just tried to stab you.”

“Eh, I’d stab first and ask questions later if something suddenly made a noise behind me too these days,” Wonho said with a shrug. “I guess you just seem like a good person, that’s all.”

_Good person_. The words struck Hyungwon in an odd way, and he blinked, confused, at the odd lurch the words caused in his stomach. _Good person_. He’d stopped thinking of himself as a good person a long time ago, he was thoroughly convinced that he was in fact the opposite of a good person, but hearing this perfect stranger say that he thought that about  _him_ , after just meeting him, was...

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was being offered free alcohol, he wasn’t going to need to risk his neck for it, and at the end of the day he was probably never going to see Wonho again. So, he reached out and he accepted it without a word, silently packing it away with the rest of the goods he’d managed to gather from this place.

Wonho moved silently behind him to grab a few packs of ramen from the next aisle over. They didn’t speak for a few moments as they scoured the store for whatever other supplies that hadn’t already been looted, and in an odd way, the silence was somewhat....comforting? Easy? Hyungwon didn’t know for sure, but it felt safe in a way that almost scared him.

Which was why, after a few moments, Hyungwon quietly made to leave, hoping that Wonho wouldn’t notice.

“Hey!” Wonho called out behind him. Hyungwon cringed, not wanting to address him. However, against his better judgement, he slowly turned around.

Wonho flashed him another bright smile (what was it with him and smiling? And why did his smile make his face light up as if it was the sun like that?) and said “Maybe we’ll see each other around here and there?”

Involuntarily, Hyungwon felt the urge to run, agitation crawling under his skin. “I’d rather not,” he snapped. “Thanks for the alcohol, but I’m not planning on sticking around here. Bye.”

With that, he turned and left, trying to calm himself down. It was a bit of an extreme reaction, sure, but what kind of person does that? What kind of person almost gets stabbed by a total stranger and turns around with a smile, offering some of the most valuable supplies one can have in the apocalypse, and tells him that he thinks he’s a good person?

Because Hyungwon wasn’t a good person. He didn’t deserve that kind of kindness. He’d done things he didn’t want to speak of, he’d tried to have friends before and it always fell apart, always went to hell, and he was done with it all.

He’d made up his mind to leave the next day before the store’s door had even closed behind him. Wonho’s kindness had made him feel strange inside. It was a dangerous kind of strange, the kind that eventually lead to trust, and then lead to hell.

He couldn’t afford that again.

* * *

  
He decided to find a place to sleep somewhere in the suburbs, since city centers tended to be where the hordes of undead liked to congregate. That wasn’t to say that the suburbs were zombie-free, of course - there were always some shuffling around on the streets, trapped in cars, roaming among the other corpses rotted beyond recognition, the evidence of carnage, and whatever else was left in the wake of the plague.

Hyungwon stuck to the back of the buildings, the shadows, searching for an easy entrance that wasn’t facing the main street where most of the zombies were. He found the back entrance to an old deli - a groaning corpse of an old woman with her legs twisted beyond use was scrabbling in the dirt, blocking the door, but with a flick of Hyungwon’s wrist there was a knife in her eye and her snarling attempts at crawling towards him ceased. After retrieving his knife and kicking the corpse to the side to open the door (noting the splintered boards of what used to be a harried attempt to close it off), he entered the building.

It seemed that the previous owners had taken what precautions they could when the apocalypse arrived, as the front doorway and windows were heavily boarded. There were also signs of life there - not recent life, but an abandoned emergency radio, some empty cans, and some leftover firewood showed that other survivors had camped out here before him. Hyungwon did a brief sweep of the small building, checking each of the rooms for others and for stray zombies.

Back in the early days, he’d had an unfortunate run-in with a zombie that had been trapped in a locked bedroom that had lunged the moment he’d unlocked it and cracked the door open - this was in the early days when he still stayed with groups, and one of the others managed to get it in the head before it bit him, these days he was on his own and needed to take extra precautions.

Thankfully, the building was clear - nothing but a few abandoned blankets and a half rotted corpse (a zombie killed before he got there, probably), but no signs of other survivors, at least not recent survivors, for which Hyungwon was grateful. He didn’t want to admit it, but there was a piece of him that even more on edge than before he entered the city following his encounter with Wonho.

He had been bad with people even before the world went to hell, and these days it was worse than ever. After his recent experiences with others...no, other survivors were something he could really, really do without. Especially another survivor that thought he was a good person, someone who acted nice, who offered him soju and didn’t try to kill him for his supplies...

To take his mind off of it, Hyungwon idly fiddled a bit with the old radio and got a few short bursts of static before it fizzled and died. Not that he’d expected anything different. He had no idea how many people were alive these days, and any sign of civilization was long gone. Even if the radio had worked, there was no guarantee that he would’ve liked what he heard. Back then, in the early days, all the broadcasts did was spread panic - another city overrun, another failure of the military, another safe zone compromised. Back in those days, he still saw the military out and about, trying to herd other survivors and maintain some sense of order in the chaos. Order that never lasted.

The apocalypse had a way of bringing out the worst in people, though, and it didn’t take long for any sense of organization and hierarchy to fall apart. It didn’t take long for people to start backstabbing each other, fighting for scraps of food, leaving people behind -

Anyway. It didn’t matter, the building was clear, and Hyungwon pushed a few heavy boxes in front of the back door he entered through before snagging a few of the abandoned blankets, retreating upstairs, shutting the door behind him. After a pause, he took out one of the bottles Wonho had given him. It was sealed and unopened, just as promised, and after a moment of hesitation he cracked it open and took a swig.

It burned a bit on the way down on his dry throat. Soju was supposed to be sipped, usually, but it had been so long and meeting Wonho had messed with his head enough that Hyungwon didn’t really care.

It shouldn’t have messed with his head that much, but meeting a survivor that wasn’t constantly in fight-or-flight mode, meeting a person who showed basic kindness...well, Hyungwon didn’t really know what to think. All he knew was that joining with others was dangerous, that kindness always came with a cost, and that if he wanted to stick to his rule of not making friends he needed to leave, and he needed to leave soon.

He took another swig of soju for good measure, savoring the buzz in his head that he hadn’t experienced in so long, then chased it down with water (a hangover was something that he really couldn’t afford these days), then rolled over and fell asleep.

* * *

  
By the time he woke up, the sun was already fairly high in the sky, sunbeams glaring in through what was left of the boarded-up window. He laid still for a moment, listening intently for any sign that a zombie had managed to break in during the night or of any other suspicious noise, but all was quiet.

Too quiet, almost. There wasn’t even much noise outside the building, where around a dozen undead had been shuffling around the night before. Hyungwon stretched and rolled over and stretched, then took a few moments to lie there, staring idly at the ceiling, before finally forcing himself to stand and actually search the building.

It was just as empty as it had been last night, and he took the opportunity to scour it for whatever he could find. A few moldy bits of.....something? He didn’t want to know. A butcher’s knife that had been shoved under a shelving unit - that he could use. There wasn’t much else to take here beyond what was left behind by others, so Hyungwon packed up what he had and went back upstairs, busted open the boards on the upstairs window, and clambered onto the roof.

The shops and apartments in the suburbs were built in one long, singular row, so in these types of areas Hyungwon preferred to walk along the rooftops as opposed to the ground below. He had a fairly nice view of his surroundings, rooftops tended to be zombie-free, and -

He winced as a particularly sharp rock pierced his worn-out shoe. Shit. That was one thing he had forgotten to get at the department store yesterday - new shoes.  
For a brief moment, he considered ignoring his the pitiful state of his footwear and hitting the road anyway, but it only took a few more steps and another stabbing pain in his other foot to convince him to suck it up and turn around and make his way back to the department store he raided the day before.

Thankfully, he could see the department store from yesterday rising above the shops not too far away. He continued climbing along the rooftops (he definitely wasn’t whispering “parkour” to himself every time he crossed a gap, not at all), at least until the buildings began varying in height so much that the climbing up and down was no longer worth it and he used a convenient fire exit to go back down to street level.

As he walked, a zombie stumbled out of an alleyway and lunged at him, snarling. Hyungwon dispatched it with ease, using his newfound butcher knife to cleave its skull open with a satisfying...well, honestly he didn’t really know what to call that noise, but as the zombie fell at his feet his eyes fell on a patch of open earth by the side of the road that gave him pause.

There were plants growing.

That in itself wasn’t what was surprising, though. It had been a year since the apocalypse had started, after all, and nature was slowly reclaiming the roads, towns, and cities with the lack of maintenance. These plants were different, though. The earth seemed like it had been deliberately turned over, the ground was clear of overgrowth and weeds, and the plants were growing at even enough intervals that it seemed....

Hyungwon immediately snapped his head away from the plot of dirt and kept walking, doubling his speed towards his destination. Nobody in their right mind would take the time to grow a garden, he thought, and hardly anyone stayed in the same place long enough to tend to one. He didn’t want to entertain the possibility that it belonged to someone, a someone that he didn’t particularly want to run into again.

* * *

  
He combed through the department store as quickly as he could, listening intently for the sound of zombies or other people so that he wouldn’t be taken off guard as he was the day before. The shoe store was exactly as he remembered it, and to his relief it had been barely touched - one of the few stores that hadn’t been as heavily looted, it seemed.

Hyungwon sorted through the shoes quickly, trying a few on before choosing a pair and discarding his worn, rubbish ones to the side as he made to leave.

A lone zombie had wandered in while he was searching - he made use of his knife again, silently thankful that this part of town mostly had a few odd undead here and there as opposed to the hordes that had overrun these areas in the early days he remembered. One zombie was much easier to deal with than ten.  
Just as he exited the building a familiar voice called out to him, “Hey, nice to see you again!”

Hyungwon flinched, and turned to see a beaming Wonho waving at him from down the street. He had dirt-caked gloves on - somehow, Hyungwon wasn’t surprised to see that he was coming from the direction of the odd set of plants he’d seen earlier.

Hyungwon frowned and called back, “Why are you here?” The other man was still approaching, to his distaste, and in a moment was standing with him in front of the store.

Wonho, still grinning, said, “I’m checking on one of my gardens over there-” he gestured in that direction, “and I saw you coming out of the store and figured I’d say hi!” He paused, then frowned worriedly. “Now that I think about it, I did see a biter wander in there a bit ago - did you run into it at all?”

Hyungwon stared at him blankly, bewildered. He’d met this man a day ago, and here he was worrying about him. “I took care of it.” He said carefully, before adding, in a sharper voice, “Why do you care? I tried to kill you yesterday, why are you talking to me?”

Wonho looked at him curiously for a moment, then his eyes became serious. “But you didn’t try to kill me, not really.”

Hyungwon barked a laugh. “I nearly stabbed you in the face-”

“But you stopped when you realized I was human,” Wonho interrupted. “You could have kept fighting, tried to actually kill me regardless of whether I was alive or one of the undead, you could have stabbed me and taken what supplies I had, but you didn’t. You stopped.”

Hyungwon stared uncomprehendingly. “I-”

“That’s why I said you seemed like you were a good person, you know.” Wonho continued. “I could be wrong, of course, but you’re still not trying to kill me right now. A lot of people do that.”

“I know,” Hyungwon snapped. “Believe me, I know. I still don’t understand why you’re so nice, or why you’re growing gardens, or-”

“I like to think there’s good in people,” Wonho said with a shrug. “I like to think there’s a chance that life can come back, too.”

Hyungwon looked at him, just looked at him for a long moment. “You’re a fool, then.” He said bluntly.

Wonho shrugged. “Yeah, probably,” he noted the pack strung across Hyungwon’s back and tilted his head. “You’re leaving, then?”

“Yeah,” He replied, not even trying to keep the tightness out of his voice. “I just needed better shoes before I left, that’s all.”

“You might want to wait a day or so,” Wonho advised. He gestured towards the sky, to the thick clouds rolling on the horizon. “Looks like it’s gonna rain soon, you won’t want to be caught in that.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hyungwon snapped. Without another word, he turned and stalked away. He didn’t want to talk to this man anymore, the man who acted like he cared, the man who foolishly thought there still might be something good in this shithole of a world. It was dangerous to think like that, and Hyungwon needed to get away before it got inside his head.

Wonho, to his credit, didn’t try to follow. Instead, he simply turned and walked back to his garden, quietly tending to the plants.

* * *

  
Wonho was right, to Hyungwon’s annoyance. He had hardly walked out of sight of the goddamn department store before the first few raindrops started hitting him.

Gritting his teeth, he kept pressing forward until the drops turned into a steady rain, and then the rain turned into a downpour and he decided, begrudgingly, to take shelter in a random building on his right.

To his further annoyance, there were zombies in this one. The corpse snarled as it struggled against the table that trapped it against the wall, and Hyungwon could hear the unmistakable thuds of zombie footsteps above his head. He wasn’t about to go back outside, though, so he sucked it up and stalked over to the zombie.

He was still on edge, and a knife didn’t quite feel satisfying enough for him at the moment, so he instead grabbed a board off the floor - one with nails still sticking out of it - and, with all his might, brought it down on the zombies head with an ugly thwack.

At this point, most zombies had been dead and decomposing long enough that their bones - and more importantly, their skulls - were brittle and easy to break, and this one was no exception. Its head burst with the impact and bits of brain matter splattered the wall. Grumbling to himself, he stalked upstairs to get rid of the other ones before coming back downstairs, using the board to seal off the door so other undead couldn’t get in, and sat down on the floor, glaring.

He didn’t really understand why the other man bothered him so much - as far as he could tell his kindness was genuine, but that almost put him more on edge. The apocalypse brought out the worst in people - that much he knew, that much he’d witnessed himself, and every time he’d convinced itself it might be worth it to have others around to watch his back had gotten worse until he’d almost gotten killed for it.

He would leave this city before Wonho had a chance to say another word to him. That much he knew for sure. He would leave before Wonho had another chance to be kind, to believe in life, to tell him that he thought Hyungwon was a good person, of all things.  
It was too dangerous.

He did wonder, however, how someone that goddamn nice had managed to survive this long.

* * *

  
He got his answer, about a week later. The rain had lasted for days, but it had let up for a bit. The sky still looked chaotic enough that Hyungwon didn’t quite feel comfortable enough to set out for sure, though.

He didn’t actually run into Wonho again, but he did happen to glance out of the window of the building he was in during a supply run just in time to see Wonho’s gloved fist punch clean through a zombie’s skull, causing it to explode like a disgusting, rotten grape.

Well. That explains that.

* * *

  
Another week passed.

He did run into Wonho every once in a while, but thankfully the other man knew well enough by now to keep his distance.

He found a few more of Wonho’s gardens, though. They were scattered throughout the area, probably to prevent him from losing his entire crop should a mob come through or should some jackass decide to tear it up. They were all small, nice, quaint. The exact opposite of something one would expect to find after the world ended.

After a little while, as the days went on and his supply routes became regular, Hyungwon started finding small bags at these gardens. They had simple things in them, like half-empty bottles of painkillers, a few cans of soup, and Hyungwon even snorted when he found a stupid cartoon frog figurine in one of them. He didn’t have to wonder who was leaving them there, but he tried to put it out of his mind as he pocketed them.

* * *

  
Two weeks had passed and the rain was gone, but Hyungwon still hadn’t left.

His bag was still packed - it was leaning against the door, filled with his essentials, ready to go whenever Hyungwon decided to walk out of this city and never turn back.

But even after making up his mind again and again - I’ll leave tomorrow, I’ll leave as soon as this rain lets up, I just need to track down a better weapon to replace this old one and then I’m out of here - he keeps delaying, even though he still didn’t fully understand why.

Even after spotting other survivors - there’s the pair of guys he spots from a rooftop one day, sticking close together as they went in and out of shops on the street, the noise of the group that had passed his shoddy apartment one night, even after all of that he still couldn’t bring himself to actually walk out of the city and leave it behind.

And if Hyungwon spots a zombie shuffling through one of Wonho’s scattered gardens one day while scavenging for supplies, if he purposefully puts himself in its line of sight so that it limps, snarling, towards him and away from the plants it had been trampling, well, that means nothing.

If Wonho happened to glance out of the window of a nearby building just in time to see Hyungwon put the zombie out of its misery, if he and paused, watching thoughtfully, before turning and continuing on his way...well, that doesn’t mean anything either.

**Author's Note:**

> pls come talk to me
> 
> Tumblr: minhyukielee.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: @betamaz


End file.
